Students in media production and digital design classes at St. Charles Catholic High in LaPlace recently participated the “One Hour of Code” program as part of the National Computer Science Week. The event was held Dec. 9-15 with over 15 million students participating nationwide.

Teachers Gary Zeringue and Robyn Denny led the classes. Students first watched a promotional video, “Code Stars,” featuring Bill Gates of Micosoft, Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and Elena Silenok, founder of the fashion company, Clothia. The video discussed the need for more people to learn “code’” the language that enables computer programmers to develop software used for things such as games, business productivity, and social media websites.

After viewing the video, students selected an hour of code activity that included the opportunity to use code for games, holiday greeting cards, and even developing an app. Students visited various websites.

“I never realized how fun code could be. The program opened a new prospective for me," said senior Ani Boudreaux. Boudreaux used code for games such as LightBot and Angry Birds.

Students in the digital design and media productions classes participated in the one-hour project, which aimed to create awareness and recruit students for possible careers in writing code. In the next five years, it is predicted that there will be a demand for 1.4 million workers to write code and an estimated supply of only 400,000 qualified to meet the demand.